It takes courage to lead. It also takes knowledge, experience, and a willingness to learn and share your expertise and your learning journey with those you lead. Current trends in society are to turn inward and myopic for information. Leaders may think that they and those around them already know all the answers when they may not even know the questions. Social media has made us conforming robots, receiving reinforcement of what we know to be “true.” Authentic leaders know intuitively that they don’t have all the answers and that they need to expand their knowledge, not let artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms define and limit their perspective (see case study below).
We humans are social animals. We have a natural tendency to join groups, and usually it’s groups within our immediate surroundings, family, friends, coworkers, etc. With today’s social media and AI assistants, we are being fed information that algorithms determine would be most consistent with our world views.
Belonging to any group gives us a sense of comfort, whether it be a family, tribe, sports team, religion, nation, or other group. We also know that a narrow view can blind us to new ideas and prevent progress. Organizations succeed when their leaders learn from others, borrow ideas, innovate, and expand their point of view. Leadership that is dogmatic refuses to consider the perspective of the “other.” Leadership that promotes growth and learning maintains a perspective that presumes we are all the “others.” The notion that my group/knowledge/world view is the only one is called ethnocentrism and is dangerous to all. One of the surest predictors of failure is when a global leader in any industry thinks past successes are a guarantee of future success. Leaders who are constantly looking for new ideas outside their immediate organization increase the likelihood of future success.
Expand Your World View
Here are a few actions leaders can take to expand their knowledge and world view:
- View a variety of media to learn the news. Watch news from other countries, whether it is NBC or the BBC; read magazines from other countries such as The Economist, The Financial Times, China Daily, or Time Magazine. English speakers benefit from the opportunity to read with one click hundreds of newspapers that put out English editions or have English translations.
- Network beyond your comfort level. This can be with leaders from different backgrounds, industries, nationalities, etc. Going to conferences or retreats that focus on creativity, integrity, or other generic skills and talents provides an opportunity to learn from the same starting point where there are no correct answers. Each leader’s learning is unique to their lived experiences.
- Ask people with specialized knowledge or experience to help mentor you in areas that are unfamiliar to you. For example, an older leader asks a younger employee to mentor them on their use of social media and AI.
- Meet with employees who are from diverse backgrounds such as: gender, race, nationality, etc. Ask if they have any recommendations about improving the opportunity for advancement in the company. Ask what impediments they have experienced and if they have experienced any bias at work
- Travel to different locations within your company both domestically and internationally. If there are no other locations in your company, ask to observe a different type of organization in another location. Leaders will learn things through serendipity, as well as more structured experiences.
- Network beyond your comfort zone. If a leader lacks international experience, they can join Rotary International, interview expatriates who are on an international assignment or who recently returned from an international assignment, or host a reception for employees with international backgrounds.
The trend for leaders to surround themselves with people who think just like them or get information from social media that feeds information that matches the leader’s profile has become epidemic. This has become “group think” on steroids, which is detrimental to any organization. The famous example of President Lincoln placing people in his cabinet who he knew had views that differed from his is emulated by many leaders to avoid corporate myopia. Leaders who are open to new ideas, experiences, and who are interested and curious about people and ideas that differ from their own will always be learning and adding value to those they lead.
Case Study
Leaders at one of the world’s largest medical consumer products companies, who were responsible for their company’s global supply chain, were asked by the Organizational Effectiveness leader to attend a two-day program on Working Globally. There was resistance from many who felt they already knew what they were doing and did not need the course.
As the instructor, I began the course by asking the leaders to fill in a blank map of two of the most important regions where they source materials (Europe and Asia). They each had traveled to these regions. When presented with the blank maps, the average number of countries identified was three for each region, out of a total of 20 countries per region. This got their attention quickly since they each had a story to tell about not knowing which countries border other countries and comparing how much better one country was doing in comparison to the country they were in, which was insulting based on their historical relationship to one another. Twenty-five years later, the new head of Global Supply Chain from the same company called to inquire about a similar course. The new leader did not know the name of the course or the instructor, but they did remember the shock in the group when they could not identify most of the countries they visited. I told the new leader I was the one who delivered that program. The leader could not member my name, but more importantly, they remembered the experience and the lesson. They did not know what they did not know.
